Evanna Lynch was a huge Harry Potter fan years before she was a character in a Harry Potter film. And she wasn't just a run of the mill enthusiast; instead she was the kind of fan who knew exactly how to make the weird radish earrings that her character in the new film "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," Luna Lovegood, likes to wear. And as it turned out, she was so good at designing strange jewelry that the film's costume department decided to use her creations rather than their own. That's the rare kind of insight and dedication Lynch brought to her performance in the fifth installment of the wildly popular Potter film series. A fan of the books since they first appeared, there was a fairy tale aspect to Lynch getting cast in the film. Suddenly she found herself working alongside actors she had admired for so long. She had gone to London with no acting experience to audition. Amazingly, she beat out thousands for the part. Knowing all there was to know about her character certainly helped her performance, but there was that small matter of first meeting her idols on the set. "I was quite intimidated by all the actors, having worshipped them for a long time. They didn't try to be intimidating but that's just what happened," Lynch said in a recent interview with her hometown paper, the Drogheda Independent. "I was so afraid of being the one who would mess up a scene, but the nerves went quickly because there is such a good atmosphere on the set. It calmed me down to see that no one gets the scene on the first take." Lynch spent six months filming in England, and then returned to Ireland to complete her Junior Certificate exam in June. Not surprisingly, she freely admits that it was difficult to focus on her studies while she was hanging out with the cast and having a ball on the set. Says Lynch, "I got very carried away by my Harry Potter life and we did have school but I didn't study. I just had fun. "After all the school I missed I had so much work to catch up on. I just have to do solid work now and that is hard because there are so many distractions. I think it's just because it's my first film. Hopefully on the next one I can balance the two worlds - school work and acting - a bit better." Visiting the sets of the Ministry of Magic, the Forbidden Forest and Hogwarts itself was a revelation to her. "It was like watching a story you imagined for years write itself," says Lynch. "It was just as brilliant and perfect as I hoped, and even though I was determined that I would get into a Harry Potter movie before it all, I was a bit stunned. Every time I stopped and thought and realized how smoothly it had happened." Asked what are the differences between her and the slightly loopy character she plays Lynch replies, "I think the main difference between us is that I'm a lot more ambitious and that makes me serious. Luna is so free and seems to drift, dealing with everything as it comes to her. "I have more goals and more worries and I think that's why I love Luna so much. She doesn't have to have achievements to feel satisfied and she's as wonderful and as balanced as can be. She knows worrying is pointless and I really admire that in her." The final book from author J.K. Rowling in the seven book series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," arrives on the shelves on July 21. Containing the long anticipated final chapter, where fans will discover which characters live and die, and some book chains have already taken the dramatic step of setting up grief counseling telephone hotlines for the diehard fans who they anticipate will feel completely adrift after reading the final page. The suspense that has been building about Harry's fate and the death's of two of the book's major characters has had fans speculating for years about possible outcomes, but having met Rowling, Lynch may be a little more clued in than the rest of us. "This is the end of the series, this is the end of Harry's life, this is the end of lots of people's lives," Lynch says, although she claimed she would not need to phone the special "mourning-Harry" helpline that retailers have set up for post "Deathly Hallows" blues. This month, as she has done from the start, Lynch plans to line up with other fans to buy the book on the day of its release, and she has some ideas of what the book might contain. Says Lynch, "None of us knows the meaning of the term Deathly Hallows, but we have theories. My favorite theory is that it refers to the veil (between this world and the next) in the Department of Mysteries. "All Hallows Eve is the time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. I think Harry will have to go through the veil for some reason and he'll have to get to understand death more and he may meet Dumbledore (the kindly old wizard who acts as a guardian to Harry, and who was killed in book six). "J.K. Rowling is always emphasizing that there are worse things than death and I think it would be very like her to trick us like that, so that Harry is 'dead' but we are still with him, death isn't the end. Most people think that he either lives or dies, but I like the idea that it's an in-between." Appearing in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" will transform Lynch's young life, but first and foremost her excitement about doing so is the excitement of a true fan. Says Lynch, "I thought I would be reliving "The Order of the Phoenix," but it wasn't like that at all. I was a little bit heartbroken to see that all the sets were in different parts of the studio or that some of them had been dismantled. "Also, as I got to know the other actors I realized how different they were from their characters, extremely nice but different. As a fan that was tough to learn at first. I didn't think I'd fit in as well as I did but I had the best time with all those people and I looked forward to it every day." The film's international premieres occurred in Japan, the U.S., Britain and Ireland this month and Lynch attended as many as she could, but this time she was walking the red carpet with the other cast members rather than watching it live via web cam on one of the Harry Potter fan sites like Mugglenet.com. She is delighted by her glowing critical reviews too - J.K. Rowling calls her performance "perfect" and The New York Times calls her "spellbinding" - but she's still such a fan that only one critical assessment truly matters. "I have a nightmare of being at the after-party and meeting the author J.K. Rowling and she's just standing there shaking her head and looking sad. But she has been positive so far, so I am optimistic."